Page 19 of One Little Favor
“What if I don’t have any left either?” She gives me a teasing smile.
I bend down and pull my boxer briefs up my legs so there’s at least some fabric between us. “We’re both going to have to dredge some up, because we have one wall left to finish and then we’re done. Then, we can go to our respective homes and get ready for this dinner we have to suffer through, after which I fully plan to spend the entire night getting familiar with every part of your body.”
She takes a step toward me and puts her hand on my chest. “You can’t say things like that and not expect me to want to take those clothes off you again. You obviously have no idea how turned on I am right now.”
“Tell me, then,” I say, but I reach down and pull my jeans up. If I don’t get some clothes on, I am confident I’m going to take this in a direction I don’t want it to go here in my office. But, God, the fantasies I’ve had as I fucked my hand in my shower after lunchtime games of squash with my friend Alex. Fantasies of Avery bent over my desk, or straddling me in my chair, or pushed up against the windows in my office—and the knowledge that I could make them a reality today ... it’s hard to resist that temptation.
“Nope,” she chirps. “You’re getting dressed, so I’m not going to get myself all worked up just to be disappointed.”
She starts to spin away, like she’s going to flounce off now that she’s made her point. She wants me, and I’m not delivering. Instead, I grab her arm and pull her back toward me so she crashes into my chest. Then I rest my forehead on hers and say, “I guarantee, Avery, that you arenotgoing to be disappointed. You and me, we’re worth waiting for.”
“You’ve already made me wait a year,” she complains.
“So a few more hours isn’t going to hurt.”
“Oh,it hurts,” she says with a low laugh.
“I promise I’ll make it all better tonight.”
“Fine.” She sighs. “Let’s get this finished so we can get out of here.”
We go back to painting, and once that last wall is finished, and the paint tins are all capped and set aside, I take a look around. The deep blue of the walls doesn’t make the space feel dark at all. Instead, it highlights the two walls of windows and all the light streaming through them. “This looks great,” I tell Avery.
“It really does. We’ll hang the curtains tomorrow morning once the paint is dry, and then the furniture is coming between 8 and 10 a.m. Everything will be ready long before your brother and sister-in-law stop by at the end of the day.”
My phone rings in my pocket and I pull it out to see Jeremy’s name lighting up the screen. “Speak of the devil,” I say to Avery before answering. “Yeah?”
“We had a mechanical emergency on our flight,” Jeremy says. “And right now, we’re stuck in Nova Scotia.”
“When are you going to be able to leave?” After the words are out, I realize I probably first should have made sure everything is okay, and that they didn’t have to crash land in Canada or something.
“Looks like tomorrow afternoon at the earliest. Which means we’re going to have to cancel the New York part of this trip or we won’t be back to Chicago in time for the Christmas Eve party.”
My parent’s annual Christmas Eve party isthesocial event of the season. Chicago glitterati would not miss that night, but I haven’t been in a decade.
“So I had my girlfriend cancel her plans with her parents and come back to New York,” I say, winking at Avery despite the edge in my voice, “for this dinner, and now you’re canceling?”
“Don’t be such a bitch,” Jeremy says, reminding me exactly why I don’t like him. “I didn’t create the mechanical issue, and I definitely don’t want to be stuck in Nova Scotia for twenty-four hours. Anne is very displeased with this whole situation.”
I can tell just by the tone of my brother’s voice that Anne’s displeasure is making things difficult for him. Good. In typical Shepherd fashion, he married her for her title, so I hope she makes him miserable.
“Whatever. Don’t cancel the dinner reservations. I’m still taking Avery out.”
“Oh, so she has a name,” he says.
Shit.“Of course she has a name.” Not that he deserved to know it. And now that he does, we’re going to have to keep up the pretense of our relationship, which shouldn’t be an issue as I plan to turn this fake dating situation into real dating as quickly as possible.
After I get off the phone with Jeremy, I tell Avery, “It looks like it’s just you and me tonight.”
“Good,” she says. “I like that option much better.”
CHAPTER7
AVERY
“Wow.” He breathes out the word as I approach him at the bar. “You look ...”
When he fails to finish his sentence, I hazard a guess: “Not like myself?”
